Alex Ovechkin and LeBron James are two of the greatest athletes ever, regardless of sport.
The Washington Capitals legend is the NHL’s all-time leading goal scorer. The Los Angeles Lakers superstar is the NBA’s all-time leader in points.
They’ve done many other exceptional things, too.
And what they’ve both done as well as anyone is stick around for a long, long time.
That is captured in this stat shared the other night by ESPN, regarding what percentage of players in the history of the NHL and NBA these guys have played against:
This graphic is absolutely wild pic.twitter.com/B8zrRFrkbA
— ᴀʀᴅᴀ Öᴄᴀʟ (@Arda) October 29, 2025
James has played against more than one-third of the players to ever play in the NBA, and Ovi is nearly at one-third. That’s astounding.
This was a lot of work for a statistician, too.
It obviously helps both of these guys that expansion has happened more recently, so there are simply more players to play against.
It still means they’ve stuck around for about as long as is possible. And they’re still doing it at a high level.
Ovechkin’s number might be even wilder, because the NHL has existed 29 years longer than the NBA. Even though it didn’t have many teams in its early years, that’s a bunch more history that has to get mixed in to make this stat work.
For both guys, it’s just one more piece of evidence of their greatness.
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